Passengers expect honesty about the causes of disruption
In a previous article, I commented on my journey home from Twickenham on Tuesday 19 June after attending a concert by the Rolling Stones. On the day intending passengers were turned away from Twickenham station and advised that the station was closed due to trespass on the line in the station area and was unlikely to reopen that night.
However, I recently read in a magazine that the decision was taken to close the station because due to earlier train failures at Clapham Junction and Vauxhall trains and crews were out of position and very few services were running therefore there was insufficient capacity to handle the crowds expected at Twickenham station after the concert.
These two explanations are not consistent. Passengers expect honesty about the causes of disruption.
I have a complaint in with SWR regarding the 19:25 Exeter St Davids – Waterloo on 3 Sep 2018. There was a points failure just outside Salisbury, and the Rail Industry Standard Customer Communication Protocol was implemented – i.e. as little as possible, and what there was was blatantly wrong. Guard kept saying “we should be moving i 5 to 10 minutes”. I’m pretty convinced that, as we were held for a whole hour at Salisbury, the plan was that the following Basingstoke train would be terminated at Salisbury and the passengers transferred to our train. When we finally moved, I tweeted the SWR team expressing the hope that we wouldn’t be terminated at Basingstoke – a favourite trick for Salisbury/Exeter trains. No, they said, no plans to at present. Indeed, that was correct. Correct, but incomplete. Just after we left Basingstoke it was announced that we’d be terminating at Woking.
I ended my complaint with “Finally, I would appreciate details of the action plan you will presumably be developing and implementing to improve your handling of such disruption in future.” Maybe this has rattled their cages, as I did get a “holding” email after 2 weeks telling me they were awaiting a response from the relevant management teams, and they’re getting to be well past their 20 or maybe 10 working days SLA (depending which doc you read)
Oh, and it was only after poking the Twitter team that Journeycheck stopped saying “delays of up to 15 minutes…” Still, I did get my entire £15 advance single refunded for a 1hr 30 min delay on a 3 hour scheduled journey. And an onward cab to my final destination from Waterloo with no quibbling. Well, once the gateline staff member had stopped thinking I’d missed my train and that was why I’d arrived late and actually got a manager.
It does seem that the new MTR/First SWR franchise is trying to out-do the other ex-SR Govia-“led” franchises for excreable customer service.